24 Days: The Kidnapping and Murder of Ilan Halimi

Authors: Ruth Halimi, Emilie Freche

On January 20, 2006, Ilan Halimi was kidnapped and taken to an apartment in Bagneux, France. He was held and tortured there for more than three weeks before being thrown into the woods by his executioners.

In this poignant memoir, originally published in French, Ilan's mother recalls the 24 days of this nightmare during which she received more than 600 phone calls, ransom demands that constantly changed, insults, threats, and pictures of her tortured son. Police procedures repeatedly failed.

Ruth's intuition and her own quiet inquiries led to a fuller truth behind her son's mysterious disappearance. As other attempted kidnappings in France came to light, Ruth realized what these cases had in common: All the intended victims were Jewish, and the motive was violent antisemitic hatred, not just money.

A starkly candid retelling of the 2006 kidnapping and murder in what became known in France as the Halimi Affair, 24 Days is a wake-up call to the growing scourge of antisemitism, extremism, and hate around the world. It is also a single mother's cri de coeur against the evil forces of hate that led to her son's horrific kidnapping, torture, and death in one of the most infamous cases involving antisemitism in French society since the notorious Dreyfus Affair a century earlier.

Hardback

155 pages